Excel Census Worksheet

Michele Simmons Lewis' post, My Latest Excel Spreadsheet, explained what should be a fairly easy spreadsheet to visualize which census data is needed for individuals in the tree.

In order to quickly create this spreadsheet, I had to review some skills I've yet to master in RootsMagic, one of those being the creation of a named group.

Once I had a named group created for my ancestors, I was able to create a custom report to pull the following fields: Surname, Given Name, Birth Date, Death Date. By saving the report as a text file, I could then open it in Excel.

In the comments section of Michele's blog post, JJT (John J Tierney)stated that he had created a similar spreadsheet that would automatically calculate the age of the person for each census year. His post, Simple Census Age Table, discusses this spreadsheet, which he freely shares.

So, I downloaded the spreadsheet. (Thanks JJT!) After manipulating my data to pull the year out of the birth and death dates, I copied/pasted my data into the census age table. I'm probably going to shade my table to indicate whether I have found the census data.

Thank you Michele and JJT for sharing your expertise and providing the incentive to analyze my data in this way!